


A Place Called Vertigo

by vtn



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Episode: s03e13 Last of the Time Lords, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-02
Updated: 2008-03-02
Packaged: 2018-07-15 00:41:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7198322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtn/pseuds/vtn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Master reawakens and goes on a murderous rampage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Place Called Vertigo

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Versaphile, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Prydonian](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Prydonian). Deciding that it needed to have a more long-term home, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact the e-mail address on [The Prydonian collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/theprydonian/profile).

Martha keeps a diary while her world attempts to unravel its own knots. As bits and pieces of the year that never was start to fade from her memory, she traps them between the neat lines of the notebook paper. Keeps them real.

So there are things she won't forget. For instance, she can't forget the tune that's actually drifting over the tinny speaker system as she wipes down the lab counter. Not when she heard it almost daily for a whole year, not when it was the only thing the radio would play.

After she's pulled off her gloves with a snap and tossed them in the trash bin, she shuts off the lights and walks crossly out of the lab.

"Tom, where are you? You know I hate this song," she shouts down the hall, fighting off a shiver. Maybe it's just a knee-jerk reaction, but she tightens her lab coat and runs her hands down her arms to keep the goosebumps down. "Tom?"

"Oh, sorry," she hears his familiar voice echoing from the other end of the hall, and Tom walks closer. It should be reassuring, but it seems like something in his walk is different. As if he's uncomfortable, at least as much as she is. As if he's excited, even.

"Tom, are you all right?"

"Best I've been in ages. Made so much progress today, and everything is in tip-top condition." Martha forces a laugh; 'tip-top condition' must be some sort of strange joke and this must be one of those odd things boys do, of which there are altogether too many. "Let's go out to dinner." He folds his arms and grins his whitest, which she has to admit is still charming despite his unnerving manner.

"No, I'm…I'm exhausted, honestly. I think I'll go home and rest for tonight. And can you please turn this song off? It's really kind of creepy." She gives him her best stare-down. He doesn't move a muscle.

Slowly, he gives her another smile, this one sly and thin. "No, really, I think you should…stay." It's about then that her stomach drops into her feet and her ears start to ring. Before she can move, Tom's arm is around her waist and she's pushing him off of her, pushing herself away, screaming at him to leave her alone and fighting off the panic that's taking her over.

But he must be still getting used to his body, because she does manage to slip out of his grasp and race for the exit. She doesn't stop running.

\---

The Doctor is awakened from one of his rare naps by the sound of a phone ringing. His first thought is that someone else should answer it, then he remembers that:

1) there are only two phones on the TARDIS and  
2) one of them is not a real phone, and since he is

a) nowhere near anything that could cause a disturbance in the electrical field  
b) indeed in the middle of deep space, so no one has tried to pick up the phone from the outside and ring it, the only possibility is that

3) it's Martha, and he needs to answer. Right now.

"Martha," he says into the cell phone, shaking off layers of sleep from his mind. "Where are you?"

"I'm in my flat," she says. She sounds… off somehow, but it's so hard to tell over a phone. "My new one. Doctor, I think," and then a quick "Excuse me," and then the sound of coughing, and then "Doctor, I think it's him."

"The Master," he says, because who else could it be?

"Somehow," she continues, her voice trembling, "he's in Tom's body. I knew it was him because of—"

"Don't. Hang up, find somewhere safe to stay, and I'll be there as soon as possible."

"But what can I do? I can't just sit here, not after—"

"Tell everyone you know who remembers. Find Torchwood. Tell them—tell them you need to help them find a Time Lord and imprison him. I can't stay on, Martha. Good luck." He hangs up the phone and gears up the TARDIS, shaking so hard he can hardly keep hold of the controls, filled with a fear he can't overcome and an excitement he can't push away.

(You are not alone.)

\---

He smells it.

This is new. He likes this new body, likes the arms and legs with their thick dark hair covering his new muscles—it's the youngest he's had since he was this age himself, and suddenly he finds the world in perfect clarity and vibrant color such as he hasn't known in centuries.

And he smells blood.

He finds he knows the names of the bones in his skeleton and the chemicals colliding underneath that youthful skin. Somewhere in the head of this boy—young, so damn young and he feels so healthy—is the kind of knowledge he could do anything with: the knowledge of exactly where to put the scalpel if you want to slash someone open, the knowledge of how much electricity will make a heart stop beating, the knowledge of—oh dear god he never needed to know that about Martha Jones and he's going to stop right there.

Instead he runs his hands down the chest of this new body of his, smoothing out the wrinkles in the boy's lab coat. And then, on a sudden impulse, he sinks his teeth hard into his new left hand, watching blood seep up to the surface.

"Oh, that’s no fun." He eyes the angry bruises circling the bite marks. "I really should see a Doctor."

\---

By the time the Doctor arrives, London is a mess. Of course, this is fitting because the Doctor also happens to be a mess.

But not like his Earth is, now. There's a stench on the air—smoke and something else. Something he hates having to face again, but has to admit he recognizes. Death.

There are bodies, too. The first person he runs into is a young man with knife wounds in his chest—knife wounds, that's different, the Doctor thinks, but every incarnation of the Master has been different. Except for that constant need to leave a mark.

"Please help me," the boy says, his words only forcing more blood from his cuts. "I know you've come to help me."

It's all the Doctor can do. He presses the boy's head to his chest and whispers in a language he hasn't spoken in years, a rite just barely remembered and long ago pushed back into his memories. He hopes death takes the boy kindly.

Not so for the Master.

He wants, he needs to fight—that this time, he won't be interrupted by psychic fields and teleportation. Or any world that ends up getting in the way.

\---

Whereas the Master—that is who he is, and the remembrance of all that goes with it is sending shivers down his (cervical-thoracic-lumbar) spine—wants blood. He loves the way it congeals on his teeth, loves the metallic taste.

"Have you ever thought about what it feels like to be born?" he asks a young woman who nervously shifts away from him, her mouth falling open when her blue dress snags on a nail on the bench.

"Are you trying to pick me up?" she asks tersely. "Get--"

"I know," he says, and draws his knife. Guns have never been this eloquent.

"It feels like this."

\---

When the Doctor finds the Master, when he can hardly keep himself from jumping out of his skin, when he's forcing himself to remember that there are actually such things as laws of physics to prevent every atom in his body from exploding, the Master is bent over a water fountain, rinsing something out of his collar.

" ", says the Doctor.

"Oh!" the Master says back, turning around and licking his lips. "You! You are a clever boy. Here I thought I would get to conduct some elaborate little scheme to flush you out, but you had to ruin my fun."

"Master," says the Doctor. There are so many other things he could be saying, and now that he's been adrift with his own thoughts the list gets longer—do you remember the way it felt when you pressed your hands to the red grasses and let the world spin under you? Do you remember the first time Time herself bent at your will, let you twist her and pull her and teach her a new path? Do you remember? But he can't. He looks into the Master's eyes and he sees curious amusement. This isn't, couldn't possibly have ever been someone who was like a god. He just couldn't.

"And look at that, he's learned my name, too! My dear Doctor." The Master puts a hand on the Doctor's shoulder, and the Doctor, frowning, shakes it off. Undeterred, the Master replaces his hand. "My dear Doctor," he repeats, "Do you remember what it was like the first time you changed a world, and it let you?"

"Stop that," says the Doctor. He figures at some point he'll need to try at full sentences, because he can't go just increasing by one word each time or he'll never make a point. "You couldn't have Earth before, and you won't again. We're even stronger than we were."

"Oh, but that's your mistake, Doctor!" Leaving a smudge of dirt—or worse—on the Doctor's sleeve, the Master lets go and twirls around, folding his hands gleefully. "I don't want Earth. I want to come with you."

"You, erm, you w—" He grabs the Doctor by the lapels, silencing him.

"I want the universe."

\---

So they'll fight, the last of the Time Lords, the good ship TARDIS trailing stardust behind her as they rip galaxies apart. Not his Earth, not his beloved little bird—she'll live on. Maybe she'll be the last one day.

Yes, the Master thinks, she'll be the last. Cradled in the hands of a galaxy with lights that extinguish one by one, Earth will float like a stone. And the humans will keep on sending their signals out into the void, calling and calling for a response that never comes.

Because that's what happens when the Doctor gets involved. He taints everything he touches. And, the Master thinks as he bats the Doctor's pretty head aside, leaving a bruise across his cheek, maybe the Master is just an accomplice. A necessary character in the Doctor's story.

But why be second best when you can be first?

"You'll die alone," the Doctor breathes through now-crooked teeth.

"I know. I have already, and I will again." Gripping the Doctor's messy hair hard with his bloody fingers, the Master continues. "For you it will be new. And I will make it hurt."

\---

Over the skies of London, there is a shower of stars.

* * *

AMS  
August 8, 2007


End file.
